For Love in Wartime
by Versus Hope
Summary: A season one Kara/Lee love story, or what happened one day, before the BSG BS drama started up, when Lee asked Kara to scoot over.


TITLE: For Love in Wartime

AUTHOR: Versus Hope

TIMELINE: Season 1, pre-Colonial Day mood

CATEGORY: Romance

RATING: M for sexual situations

SUMMARY: A season one Kara/Lee love story, or what happened one day (before the BSG BS drama started up), when Lee asked (okay demanded) Kara to scoot over.

DISCLAIMER: The Battlestar Galactica universe does not belong to me. The story here is written for entertainment purposes only, not for profit.

1.

_Whoosh!_ she hears the curtain to her bunk being pulled back abruptly. "Scoot over," comes his demand right afterward.

"What?" She looks up from her pillow, recognizes his voice playing back in her head and his form at the same time. "Apollo!" she yells, but if it were anybody else invading her privacy, she'd already be kicking their ass.

"Come on, I'm tired, Kara." He nudges her thigh with his knee. "Move over."

"Why?" she questions, but moves anyway.

"So I can lie down," he replies, giving action to the words. His bare legs push against hers as he tucks himself into her bedclothes with her. He shuts the curtain back up, lays his head next to hers, puts his arm around her waist. When he tugs her to him, her hands fall onto his chest, and her forehead rests in the crook of his neck. He is warm against her skin.

"It's okay," he runs his hand up and down her spine, eases the tension in her shoulders with a quick swipe to each one—too quick a swipe to count as a caress.

She feels his breathing even out against her palms but knows he's not asleep. She softens her body into his and closes her eyes. She lets herself smell his skin—clean, male, right. She smiles, and her fingers tighten into his shirt.

2.

The whole bunkroom is still sleeping when Kara wakes. She starts to roll and feels a solid mass at her back. She knows it is Lee before she opens her eyes. The feel of him, the smell, are like no other. If she doesn't get up now, she won't get her run in this morning, but how often will he hold her like this again? In his sleep, his arm grazes her breast, and suddenly it's an easy choice.

An hour later, he rouses. His arm is beneath her breasts, and she's been dozing lightly since the first time she woke. He squeezes her middle. "You missed your run," he speaks the words directly into her ear.

"Once isn't going to kill me," she comes back flippantly, but his breath on her earlobe gives her shivers.

"Yeah, but you're much easier to deal with if you get that endorphin high first thing in the morning."

He must have expected her elbow in his gut because he tightens his arm into his stomach. "Seriously, though, Kara," his voice clears the more he wakes up. "Next time, just climb over me."

She can't help the smile on her face, in her voice. "Next time, I'll do that."

He kisses her hair. "Time to face the music." She puzzles over his words for half a second—the time it takes for him to crawl out of her bed and for the whistles and catcalls to start. She's still smiling as Lee counters the worst of the innuendo and teasing. None of it sounds truly mean-spirited, though, much to her relief. She lays there another minute to let the actions of the night and his words this morning to sink in. Even as she carefully reminds herself it may mean nothing, especially after their recent emotional roller coaster ride, she can't deny herself hope.

"Okay, knock it off." She rolls out of bed a little more languidly than usual. It does not go unnoticed.

"Have a good night there, Starbuck?" Hotdog teases.

She stands, stretches, and smiles at Lee. "I had a very good night. What about you, Hotdog?" she shoots back. "Did the porn fairy leave anything special in your bed last night?"

"Nope, I think she was a little busy on your side of the room."

"Next time remember to leave a dirty magazine under your pillow," she offers distractedly as she opens her locker, her unseeing eyes directed at its contents.

"And take the risk she might leave me the same thing she left you? I don't think so." From the corner of her eye, she catches Hotdog pretending a cringe and then turn his eyes to Apollo, who's in front of his bunk pulling up his uniform. Kara follows his gaze and watches Lee button up his jacket.

"I'm in CIC today," Lee tells Kara as if he can suddenly feel her eyes on him.

"I know." She always knows where he's going to be.

Lee shuffles his feet in order to stand directly in front of her. "So, dinner?" he asks with serious eyes.

She nods, pretending not to notice the quiet of the room. "1800?"

"Sounds good." He smiles at her and kisses her cheek before she can smile back. He heads out the door but winks at her before he closes it behind him. She turns back to her locker quickly, trying to hide her pinkening features and curling lips. Silence reigns in the bunkroom at the domesticity of the scene until Jolly starts talking about setting up a game of pyramid in the gym after the early shift.

Kara dresses more hurriedly than usual and is out the door before they can pick teams.

3.

"So how was your day?" Lee asks as soon as they sit down together in the mess, trays still in hand. He barely said anything to her while they wiled away in line for their food, but then they were under much more intense scrutiny than normal. By now, everyone on the ship must know that he spent last night in her bunk. Kara just wishes it meant what everyone seemed to think it meant.

She shrugs, picks at the 'food' with her fork. "The usual. After CAP, I spent about three hours with Tyrol trying to figure out what that noise was, you know, when I hit the port thruster?"

Lee nods, his mouth full. "Find out?" he asks between bites.

She sips her milk—the only luxury of the meal before her. "Yeah actually, there was a loose couplet. Had to take the mechanism apart to find it. Chief was livid spending so much time on what he called 'that noise that only happens in crazy pilots' imaginations.' That is until he saw that I was right. Then he was mad I hadn't told him about it sooner."

He smiles at her display of ego. Kara drops her eyes realizing she's been watching his lips. "So, how was your day, dear?" Her mocking tone brings another grin to his face.

"Awful." Lee rolls his eyes, lips still upturned. "They had me pushing papers the whole shift. We need some more senior officers that Dad can trust. I hate getting pulled from the air like this." He wipes his mouth with his hand. "At least in the air it's harder to tell who's whispering behind your back."

"Ugh," she groans in sympathy.

"On the other hand," he begins with a devilish grin, "I did catch a very interesting conversation in the head between Petty Officer Jacobs and…what's that red headed kid's name?"

"Who?" Kara shakes her head. "Which one?"

"You know, the one with the," fork loaded with some pseudo vegetable, he pantomimes exaggerated muscles on his chest.

"Oh, the marine, yeah?" She lifts her glass.

"According to them, last night I yanked your panties to the side and frakked you right there in front of the entire squadron."

She coughs milk out her nose. He hurries to the end of the table for napkins, but by then her embarrassment is already too acute for words. "Frak!" She cleans up her nose and mouth first, then goes for the table. When she gets the courage to look back up at him, Lee's trying to contain a grin along with the spilled milk. She throws the soggy napkins at his head without a second thought. "You bastard, you did that on purpose!"

The new stains trickling down his uniform can't touch his grin. "Hell of an image isn't it?" Kara can't help but smile with him. "I swear it's a true story, though. Or rather, that's the story I heard them tell."

4.

He comes to her again that night.

She isn't sure he will. Still, after she showers that evening, she makes a particular effort to civilize her hair and very carefully brush her teeth. She lays under the blanket with her curtain open. It seems too obvious that she's waiting for him to come to her bed. It seems somehow desperate, and though she doesn't mind so much if Lee knows she wants him, she'd like to keep her pride among the squadron if he doesn't want her back.

Lee steps in the room. He goes to his locker, replaces his showering things, and takes off his tanks. She's never seen him sleep topless, at least not in quarters. When he turns toward her, walks toward her, her eyes ask her question.

"Oh, I got hot last night," he says as he slips between her sheets. He closes the curtain.

She nods against his chest, as they get comfortable together. "Me, too," Kara says, but doesn't shy away from his heat.

He fingers the strap of the single tank top she's wearing. "Don't stand on ceremony on my account."

She lifts her eyebrow in amusement but otherwise doesn't respond. Does he really want for them to be naked in bed together? She could definitely get behind that. She leans her head against his chest, tries to calm down. It isn't until Lee sighs in pleasure that she realizes she's drawing circles on his bare chest with her fingertips. She falters in the middle of a figure eight, unsure if she's given too much away too fast. He cups her hip with his palm in assurance. "That's nice." His words sound disconnected, dreamy, and she knows he's more tired than he let on.

"Go to sleep," Kara orders.

He makes a negative mumble. "Don't want to. I don't want to miss this."

She smiles and barely remembers to reassure him, "Shh, it's okay. I'll do it again tomorrow," she promises and lightens her touch.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

5.

This time, when Kara wakes in time for her run, she climbs over Lee, pats his stomach, and leaves the bed. She dresses quickly, cold without his heat.

She takes her usual route through Galactica on automatic. She thinks of Lee, of how he climbed into her bed as if he owned it, of how that would have pissed her off if any other man had done it. She thinks of how their casual flirting has kicked up a notch lately. She thinks they must be trying for the same future for once. She hopes it's true.

"Starbuck," Bill Adama's shout catches her out.

"Sir!" she turns back towards him. She hadn't seen him, but Kara must have just gone past him. "Good morning, sir." She jogs in place, cooling down a little, but hoping he'll let her leave without a fuss.

"How's my best pilot this morning?" Commander Adama keeps her in the hallway with conversation.

"Good, sir. How are you?"

"You look good," he continues the interrogation. "You were wearing a big smile a moment ago. Things must be going well."

She quits jogging, only shuffling her feet, giving in to the questioning. "I think things are going well."

"But?" he asks.

"But I wonder what you think." For a moment she is sure he'll pretend not to know—despite how quickly and broadly she knows the rumors about her and Lee have spread, but he surprises her.

"I think that my son had a pretty miserable assignment yesterday, that he bore with remarkable poise when everyone was looking, and with smiles when he thought no one was."

She huffs her breath in relief. "So you think that he—"

Adama cuts her off before she can finish. "I trust him to make his own choices. And I trust you."

She closes her eyes…just breathes. "Thank you."

"Hey, Starbuck," he teases. "What do you hear?"

She starts jogging backwards, back towards Lee. "Nothin' but the rain."

6.

_I yanked your panties to the side and frakked you right there._ Lee's words, his tone, his cadence echo through her mind—while she flies, while she sits in this broken Raptor trying to make sense of some nugget's wiring mistake in the hatch panel, while she breathes. Did the image hold onto Lee's mind like it did hers? Did it turn him on, she wonders? Did he want it to be true? She did. Not the whole in front of the squadron thing, but the rest of it.

She thinks he must have been turned on when he said it—wasn't he? His voice had sounded lower and deeper in his throat.

She should've kissed him this morning when she came back from her run, but just as she sat on the bed beside him, Kat peeked her head from behind her curtain, and Kara lost her nerve. It bothers her now to think that they've never had a proper kiss. Their lips have touched before, but only fleetingly, and only on the New Year and Summer Solstice holidays.

She can only consider this man in the context of forever, and yet she doesn't know what his tongue feels like against hers. There's something entirely, awkwardly, Kara-ish about that. She doesn't have a clue what the hell he wants from her. Could it be anything like what she wants with him? Kara doesn't think she can bring herself to ask him. She can barely ask herself that question.

The hatch in front of her opens without her command to do so. She moves away from the opening, pretending to look for a tool.

"Hey," Lee's voice calls as if she's conjured him herself.

"Hey," she throws back over one shoulder but doesn't look at him all the way.

He squats beside her, just a little behind her. "Chief says you've been in here a long time."

"Yeah, well I've been trying to figure out what the new techie thought he was doing to the hatch controls. Damn thing might open in transit."

"Sounds like something Cally could've fixed in five minutes."

"You're dogging my mechanical abilities, now?" She grabs onto the anger with both hands.

"No," Lee speaks slowly, gently, and she wants to know why he sounds so understanding. "I'm wondering why my best pilot, my best friend, is hiding in a busted Raptor when she usually doesn't bother to climb into the things when they're whole."

"Somebody has to fix it," she keeps her haughty tone.

He ignores the cop out this time. "Talk to me."

"Oh, I'm sorry," she smirks hoping the expression's strong enough to hide the fear beneath. "When did I turn into a sorority queen?"

Lee sighs and turns away from her, and Kara bites her lips because this is it. He's going to walk away. It'll probably only be for a little while, but sooner or later, she'll do something to drive him away for good. In fact, she may as well do it now.

Her face pinches up, and she steps into him, but as she opens her mouth to speak whatever unforgivable thing she can think up, he leans in and kisses her. She pushes against him even as she kisses back, but he just wraps his arms around her and won't let go.

And all of a sudden, she _does_ know what the slide of his tongue against hers feels like, and she knows within a second that she wants to keep feeling it.

"Lee," she breathes his name and he catches the word in his mouth as their lips meet again. "Oh, gods," her face pinches because it's so perfect. Too perfect for someone like her. She breaks away from his mouth to whisper, "You can't—"

But she can't even finish the thought because his lips are back on hers immediately, punishing her for the transgression of moving away from him. Beneath the anger of his kiss is a longing that she has a hard time believing in, but at least it's something she knows how to work with.

She rips open the snaps of her coveralls, pulls her arms from the sleeves and guides his hands under her tanks. She's more careful with the buttons of his Class B uniform, knowing how neat Lee prefers to be. She almost tears the bottom one off anyway in her haste to reach his skin.

He kisses his way from her mouth to her neck as his hands rise higher to knead her breasts beneath her tanks. She gasps and goes for his zipper, needing to feel his cock, wanting it inside her.

"Gods, Kara!" he shivers as she works into his drawers.

"Action Stations! Action Stations!" The distorted voice reaches inside even the broken Raptor.

"Frak!" Lee bumps his head against the wall. "Why?" he yells upward. Kara scrambles away him and picks up his jacket while he adjusts himself in his slacks and closes his zipper.

Lee takes his proffered jacket and is right behind Kara when she opens the door to the Raptor—which is right when the wolf whistles start. Kara shuts her eyes, knowing immediately they've been duped. When the door's completely extended, everyone on duty in the hangar, and it would seem quite a few off-duty personnel, greet the duo with applause. She bites her lip and feels her brow furrow. She tries not to, but she has to look to Lee to see his reaction.

And, _gods_, Lee looks shell-shocked with his jacket folded neatly over his crotch, and nearly ready to write citations for the false alarm if she knows him at all. But then, with her eyes still on him, he laughs like he's in on the joke, too. When he looks her way, there's embarrassment in his eyes, sure, but there's humor there, too, and more heat than anything. Kara feels a grin stretch across her lips.

The evidence of their good humor causes the whistling to renew itself. The slaps on the back follow as they push through the crowd. A few people make comments here and there, but none are as interesting as Chief Tyrol's:

"Captain Adama, you do realize that there's a window in the front of a Raptor, right?"

Lee chuckles again and admits that hadn't occurred to him at the time. He doesn't seem to mind at all that people know he and Kara almost just had sex. Of course, now that they've almost done so publicly, they'll never be left alone again.

7.

It is an uncomfortable night. The bunkroom serenades Lee and Kara's new nighttime routine with a lullaby of bawdy comments. The other pilots seem to listen for any motion or heavy breathing behind the curtain of Kara and Lee's shared bed. Every rustling of the sheet is sure to bring public attention. Kara barely moves, certain somewhere in the back of her head that the more their bunkmates jeer and cheer their potential sex life, the more likely Lee is to walk away from this possibility.

Lee wears his shirt to her bed again. She doesn't ask why. The skin-to-skin contact of their legs alone is almost enough to make her say frak it all and roll over on top of him. If it were anyone else, she honestly wouldn't mind the other pilots listening to her have a good frak, but this is Lee. _Lee_. And Kara's worried about how _she'll_ react to having sex with him, let alone what Lee himself might do.

Gods, what if she propositioned him, and he said no—right there where _everyone_ could hear? _Kara Thrace, not even good for a frak_, they'd say.

Kara sighs heavily and shuts her eyes, still debating what her options even are when Lee places a palm firmly on her stomach. It's a steadying presence and not meant to be provocative.

"Goodnight," he whispers almost sweetly, and Kara has just enough time to be disappointed with the chasteness of the action when Lee offers her a wet, sucking, tongue-most-certainly-involved kiss just below her ear.

"Oh," she sighs back softly and swallows hard because as much as she can feel how much Lee wants her in the hickey forming on her neck, she can tell just as easily that he's not comfortable going any further at the moment with such a ready audience either. It's going to be a long night.

She wakes many times during the night. The change in his breathing and the way he moves tell her Lee is sleeping fitfully as well. Each time she comes to consciousness, she's incredibly aware of the feel of his body against hers. She hopes it is the same for Lee. She hopes they are equals in want. She wishes so many times during the night that he'd wanted her enough to slide his hands down her pants at lights out, spectators be damned, but she knows, at the same time, that that's just not Lee.

The final time she wakes, she checks the clock at the head of her bed: still a half an hour early for her regular run. When she looks at Lee, his eyes are open. Kara smiles, despite her frustration, and he catches her grin with his lips. Her breath catches in her throat, and he slips her the tongue before she can brush her teeth. He doesn't seem to mind her morning breath—he traces her mouth from the inside out, willing her to let him by the sweetness of his flavor. She smoothes her tongue against his, tickling his taste buds with hers.

While he kisses her, his hand moves from her waist to her hip. The tips of his fingers flirt with the naked flesh of her thigh. She grabs the back of his head with her hand and throws a leg over both of his, releasing the scent of her body between them. It surprises her when the loud moan comes from his chest, not hers. She presses herself to him, feeling the insistence of his sex against hers. He pushes back, his lips still moving with hers, as his whole body replicates the invitation.

She traces his body from his neck to his hip then slides her thigh down his leg. His hand chases after it, trying to change its course for a moment before her fingers reach into his boxers, and pull him out, tracing his cock with her fingertips.

He loses her lips to his neck, then. She nips his collarbone as he gasps above her hair. His fingers trace back up her thigh, switching from outer to inner so to return the favor. He pushes her panties aside. _I yanked your panties to the side and frakked you right there in front of the entire squadron,_ she remembers his earlier words even as he eases his fingers beneath the fabric. She bites his shirt—and some of the skin just underneath—to muffle the groan.

He spreads the wetness along her clit, follows its source inside her. She tightens her grip on his dick and starts jerking him off in earnest.

And it's all _so_ good, but it isn't nearly enough, and when Kara looks Lee in the eye, she knows he feels it, too. She scrambles off Lee for a second—just enough to get rid of her panties. He uses the time to get rid of his shorts. Lee reaches for Kara's shirt next, throwing the tank somewhere behind her. She takes off his shirt, and realizes they're completely naked in front of each other for the first time—well, it's the first time they're naked in front of each other on purpose _and_ in private. Kara thinks this idea must be circling through Lee's head, too, because he slows down to really look at all of her and touch her slowly.

Kara used to despise men who'd touch her gently, thinking they couldn't handle her, but Lee's soft strokes only make her feel loved—no, not just loved—but something uncomfortably close to cherished.

"You have a beautiful body," Lee finally says after tracing it over and over again with his fingers.

Her breath catches—completely against her will. "Yeah?" she says, unable to think of anything sarcastic.

"Yeah," Lee says back, his eyes are on hers while he speaks and then briefly fall back down to her breasts. He drags his eyes back up to look at her, and she can see how he struggles to hold her gaze just to say, "I could look at you my whole life," on a ragged breath.

"Yeah?" she says again, not seeming to remember any other words.

"Yeah," Lee smiles and nods back, seeming not to need anything more.

He urges her closer to him, until his cock is tight against her thigh. His hands go to her back, his arms around her. He leans in close, and she closes the distance between her mouth and his. She lifts slightly onto her knees, brings a hand down to guide him inside her, and settles down onto his cock.

She tries to stifle the moan, but she can't. Her pleasure's too strong to contain. She thinks it's Lee, though, whose voice first carries past the curtain of their shared bunk and rises up into the ears of their fellow pilots. "Gods, Kara!" Lee squeezes her tight with both arms, thrusting inside her, his lips unable to keep hold of hers as his hoarse voice cries out.

"Lee!" she speaks against his throat as she rocks against him. "I love you," she doesn't mean to say. Still, the words emerge broken but true as she's so close, so needful of him. In the back of her mind, she's knows her voice is too loud, knows it's too close to early shift for someone else _not_ to be awake. "I love you," she declares again anyway, even though it almost hurts to say.

His hands grab her hips, lift her up and down his cock more quickly, more harshly. It's exactly what she needs. She grabs the short hair at the base of Lee's skull in both hands and comes with a harsh gasp escaping her lips. She thinks it's that edge of pain she gives him, in addition to the rough meeting of their bodies that makes Lee come right behind her.

She leans into Lee, her mouth open and wet against his neck while she tries to catch her breath. Slowly, he leans them both back down to the mattress. She eases off him enough to let him slip out of her, then lays bonelessly back against him.

She hears the slight sounds of the bunkroom now—that's Hotdog shifting on the upper bunk, he always moves his legs restlessly when he's horny. And then there's Jolly in the next bunk over, his breathing is much less shallow than that when he sleeps. Knowing that she and Lee weren't alone as they made love makes her so very aware of how shamelessly she declared her love for him, of Lee's returning silence.

Lee's arms are still somehow holding her, one beneath her, one around her. The arm atop her back moves slowly to stroke from her neck to her hip.

"You know I'm ridiculously in love with you, right?" Lee tells her loudly, boldly, and she knows his words are a declaration to the room at large as well as to her. This is Lee stating his intentions. This is Lee saying he's in it for the long haul—to anyone who's willing to listen.

Her breath stalls in her throat. She squeezes her eyes shut. She only opens her mouth when she thinks she can talk again, "It's only fair, right? What's good for the goose and all that."

"Absolutely." Lee nods his head seriously beside her, but she can hear the smile in his words. "I'm a big believer in fairness."

Kara bites her lip, "That's not usually the biggest concern in wartime, though," she hedges without knowing exactly what she's trying to say, only that Lee deserves a warning about her of some kind.

"So long as we're fighting together," Lee squeezes her hip, and she can feel the dual meaning of his words, "I think we'll make it."

"Oh, Lee," she grins and lifts a brow, "I can guarantee, I will _always _fight with you."

He grins back. "Figured that out a long time ago." He blinks and suddenly there's a new sort of vulnerability to his eyes. "I just wanted to give us something new to fight for. I thought maybe," he stalls and swallows hard, "maybe we deserved it."

"You think you deserve me?" Kara rolls her eyes, trying to get rid of the fluttery feeling in her guts via sarcasm.

"I don't know 'Buck," he stiffens as he brings her callsign into their bed, "I figured we might be crazy enough by now to deserve each other," there's just a touch of bitterness to his words, but it's enough to make Kara realize how much Lee really wants this—wants _her_.

She feels the pinch start between her eyebrows, and she _knows_ she's frakking this up. Why the hell did they have to start _talking _about this anyway? "Well, you are my CAG," she starts anew, trying to make this right. "I guess that means it's my job to trust you."

"I hope it's not just your job, Kara," Lee whispers and tucks a few loose strands of hair behind her ear, seeming to bring back his own vulnerability to the conversation in one fell swoop.

Quickly, she shakes her head. "This is what I, what I deserve, isn't it?" she trips over the words but gods how she hopes that's true for once, still if Lee really believes that then maybe—

"Yeah," Lee nods and leans in to softly kiss her lips. He grabs her hand and squeezes tightly. "I think this is what we both deserve."

Kara bites her lip, but can't stop her lips from widening or the rest of her face from pinching up. She leans into Lee and rests her forehead against his. Then she just hangs onto him and lets him hang onto her as she lets herself consider that maybe Lee really is right. Maybe she does deserve this. And yeah, maybe she doesn't, either. She tightens her grip on Lee and tugs him a little closer. Either way, there's no frakking way she's letting go.

THE END


End file.
